


The Difference Between Whiskey and Vodka

by doctorwhoatsonandsherlock



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2018-01-01 06:39:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1041557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorwhoatsonandsherlock/pseuds/doctorwhoatsonandsherlock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Reichenbach John isn't coping well after Sherlock's fall, and turns to drinking his sorrows away. He sits at the bar alone night after night until a man comes in who claims to share John's problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Difference Between Whiskey and Vodka

**Author's Note:**

> *Total WIP right now, caught up with school work and the like*

John Hamish Watson was never quite the same after Sherlock’s “fall”, as he preferred to call it. His days were spent picking up where Sherlock had left off. There were still cases to solve and John was the next best thing when it came to being a consulting detective, still the only one in the world. Nights were quiet, sometimes spent at Mary’s but often spent in the empty shell of 221B, void of all the experiments and specimens, excepting the skull, which dutifully remained on the mantle of the fireplace, its empty eye sockets seeming to remain fixed on John no matter where he wandered to in the flat.  
It wasn’t unusual to see him at a bar late at night now, often sitting alone, draining drink after drink. People worried for him, once the companion to the Hero to the Reichenbach, now drinking his sorrows away at a sleazy old bar several times a week. After his first week of regular attendance, most stopped bothering him, leaving the seats around him unoccupied, refraining from asking what “bachelor John Watson” was doing there all alone on a Tuesday night.  
John didn’t expect anything different from the norm when he made his way to the bar that Wednesday night. He sat down in his corner seat at the bar with the two seats to his right uninhabited. The bartender set down his usual glass of whiskey and left to attend to the other customers, although there were few there. As John sipped his drink, he heard the familiar jingle of bells that signaled the arrival of another lonely soul. Despite hearing the noise, he did not turn around, eyes fixed on the half full glass on the counter in front of him.  
Much to John’s surprise, this newcomer sat in the seat directly next to him, a sign that he had not visited this bar in quite some time, if ever. He listened as the stranger ordered a drink, vodka, hold the ice, but continued to stare into the yellow gold depth of his glass.  
The stranger turned to him as he awaited the arrival of his simple drink. “John Watson,” he said, his voice having almost no distinguishable inflection to it albeit a noticeable accent, “I almost didn’t recognize you sitting here all alone.”  
John glanced over at the man; a scar ran across the bridge of his nose, recently acquired from the look of it, and his jaw was covered in light stubble over tanned and well-worn skin. The stranger proudly displayed dog tags over his grey t-shirt, the scratched metal catching the light and obscuring the information displayed on them. As John was discreetly studying the man, he mistakenly caught his gaze, the stranger’s steel-blue eyes seeming to snicker at John as he quickly looked back down to his glass of whiskey.


End file.
